The real enemy

March 28, 2014

A few months ago a woman approached my husband and myself and said to us "You are just a bunch of losers."

Now if you know me and my husband, you would ask yourself why this person would call Judy and Doug losers. They are both hard working people, who both have jobs and pay their own way.

They owned a business in Iron Mountain for 18 years and are both upstanding members of the community. So why would a complete stranger call them losers?

The answer: We were volunteering at our fair booth with a sign above our heads that read "The Dickinson County Democratic Party."

Based on that sign alone this woman assumed we were losers. Why? Because some people, not all, in the Republican Party have worked so hard to convince people that anyone who is a Democrat is a lazy, good-for-nothing socialist who wants the government to give everything to them for free.

Most of them loll around all day and then when needed, they can take their Bridge Card to the local stores and buy steak and lobster to dine on. The echoes of Ronald Reagan are still being heard.

Yes, there are people who abuse the system, Democrats and Republicans alike, and I would be the first one to turn you in if I found out you were working the system.

But "assuming" someone is a loser, without knowing anything about that person except which political party they are affiliated with, concerns me.

At a different fair booth, in a different year, but still with a Democratic sign, one of our elected officials, a Republican whom we happen to like, approached our booth and shook our hands as he always does when he sees us. The lady in the booth next to ours asked him if he was fraternizing with the "enemy." The "enemy."

She also did not know my husband or myself, but assumed we were the enemy because the word "Democrat" was on the wall behind us.

I don't consider everyone in the Republican Party to be my enemy. I don't consider every Republican to be a loser. Maybe the real enemy or the real loser just might be the one looking back at them in their mirrors.